


Tsalmaveth

by 55anon (Anon)



Series: Apocrypha [3]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Dreams, F/F, M/M, Pain, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-09
Updated: 2015-05-09
Packaged: 2018-03-29 19:44:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3908269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anon/pseuds/55anon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for Thou art with me.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tsalmaveth

**Author's Note:**

> Could be considered dub-con, please read with caution.

 

 

Erwin is strangely certain that somewhere out in the forest of Titans, there are faces he knows.  They are not fallen soldiers grotesquely transformed.  No.  That would be too easy.

 

They are his faces.  Faces of bodies he has discarded.  Dumb, vicious faces he left behind with each life he burned through.

When he was a child, he had awesome dreams, the span and scope of which would leave him inconsolable.  Titans, being eaten, being eviscerated, screaming, regenerating limbs, unending hunger, desperation, the warmth of blood flowing down his throat, into his stomach, ripping bones, smashing heads, slicing tendon, flying, falling and waking, waking, the horror of waking.  He felt as though time was cutting into him, precisely and mercilessly.  As a child, he would stare at the mirror, recognising nothing of his face except the glow of his blue, blue eyes.  As a child, he was not afraid to die-- it was something which followed him every life.  Maria had never feared death.

Sina, his Queen, the love to whom he is bound, the flame to whom he must always return, chose to remain in the darkness while Erwin ventured into the light and spent each and every single one with one goal in mind: to annihilate the Titans, and save humanity.  That burning blue shard is something his own, something untouched by Sina, by Levi.  That is the terrible conviction of Maria.

Sina watched from the darkness, watched as the military became something atrophied and the Survey Corps, once the pride and elite of the force, became a collection bin for psychopaths, patriots, and suicidal maniacs.  She watched as humanity, the same disgusting species which had fed Maria to the Titans for the sake of a measly power play, began to eat itself in the walls.  Maria often asked her to descend so that they could finish the work they had begun lifetimes ago.  Sina never did.  It was not that she was indifferent to the fate of humans.  She and Maria could not leave the sphere of Titan-infested Earth until their fates had been completed, bound to the circle of its orbit.

But while Maria fought to keep the creeping, crawling, withering human species alive, Sina waited for Maria to realise what she had been forced to understand the moment humanity betrayed her: that it was not the Titans who were their enemy.  The cancer which allowed unchecked regeneration in Titans was the same cancer which killed humans, and there was no cure.  Finishing their work, annihilating Titans and saving humanity could only be done by bringing humanity to the point of extinction, and even then there was no guarantee this would work.

Maria simply wasn't ready to face that.  She was willing to sacrifice her lives, her soldiers, her very soul for the species.  She was not willing to sacrifice humanity.

Yet with each return from life to death Maria became harder, the essence of her compressed, more and more faces cut into her.  Sina watched as pieces of Maria were ground away until the final death, the final cut revealed a horrifying, inhuman clarity.  It was the moment Sina was waiting for.

Suddenly, their fates activated-- Erwin the diamond which centered the laser, and Levi the beam which coursed through it.  They descended, Erwin before Levi, retaining nothing but dreams and distant whispers of apocryphal tales.

 

Even now Erwin can't be certain he is not simply insane, gripped in the same madness which fuels Hanji.  The dreams are more sketches than stories, disparate and fragmented.  Yet the story which forms around the fragments gives him strength.  When he imagines the centre of him immutable, incorruptible, unbreakable as diamond, everything falls away.  Corpses, condemnation, uncertainty-- he can face anything, he will sacrifice anything.  There is no way he can fail this time.  Levi is here.  Even when Levi can't see the victory embedded in each catastrophic defeat, Erwin can feel the warm beam of the laser reflected inside him, waiting only to be unleashed.

He'd forgotten, in all of those cycles of life and death, what it felt like to live, in body, on Earth, with his love.  He'd forgotten what it was like to answer the call of one who held his fate.  This was the unexpected thing, the thing which had never appeared in his dreams.  Levi's face was never among the Titans that descended on them.  Why had Maria fallen in love with Sina?  What had that life held?

 

"You're getting lost in your head," Levi tells him, voice cutting through the darkness.

"Just finishing some paperwork," Erwin replies, the lie smooth and second nature.

Levi snorts.  "You're coming to bed.  Hanji's run out of Titans to torture, we're going hunting tomorrow.  You're going to lie back and let me ride you until you can't control yourself and you start fucking me into the mattress, and then you're going to suck me off after you come."

Erwin smiles.  "Do you speak to all your commanding officers that way?"

"Only the shitty ones who try to take down a group of three Titans without backup.  You talk in your sleep."

"So do my squad members, apparently," Erwin says, annoyed.

"The one that's left," Levi agrees.

Erwin ignores the comment, gathering his coat instead.  "Let's go to bed."

Levi follows him out the door, his hand lightly touching the spot where a broken branch had nearly impaled Erwin.  They walk down the darkened hall, Erwin placing his steps with unusual care.

"I'm going to fucking burn Hanji's books."

"Those are my books, Levi.  Hanji asked to borrow them for her research," his voice is even.

"I don't care how many answers you think you can find in fucking old stories about dead people-- don't fucking lie to me, and don't pretend it changes anything."

"Levi--"

"Shut up, undress, and lie down."

Erwin's not exhausted enough to obey.  He can feel himself starting to fall apart into so many sides and pieces, but he's not going to let Levi push him there.  Not tonight.  It hurts to breathe, his ribs are bruised and livid.

But Levi, who's never been merciful, who's not injured and had kills so clean he barely had to wipe any blood from his gear, presses his advantage.  It  _hurts_  when Levi pushes him down, his back is on fire when he tries to twist away, he'd been lucky that the skin of his forearms hadn't been degloved by the tree bark on his descent and when Levi gets Erwin's cock out, he has no idea how he's hard when most of his body is finally allowing itself to feel pain.  Erwin grits his teeth as Levi seats himself, allowing his body weight to be fully supported on Erwin's hips, and there's a brief flash of sense memory when he'd thought he'd popped his entire left leg out of joint.  Erwin screams when Levi finally starts moving, and it's not a scream of arousal.  He tries desperately to throw Levi off his body but Levi deftly avoids his increasingly uncoordinated movements, still riding him and his eyes trained on Erwin.  There is no gentleness.  Levi simply pushes and pushes him until the bright and burning pain all over his body is the only thing he knows, and he begins sliding into a numbed stupor to avoid it.

Levi narrows his eyes and changes his rhythm to something somehow even more punishing and something snaps inside Erwin.  He launches himself up and ignoring the way his body is screaming, flips them over, forcing Levi into the mattress and holding him so that he can't escape.  Levi fights back, but Erwin doesn't care, he starts fucking into Levi in earnest, not caring about angles or finesse or pleasure.  His body feels like it's burning up, the sheets are chafing on his forearms, his sweat stings the raw skin and Levi finds a way to grab hold and press his nails in until they start bleeding.  Erwin is aware at some point that he comes, but everything is overstimulating, his senses like hot air rippling, and when he finds Levi feeding him his cock, he sucks him off without really thinking.

He falls asleep, still aware of his body's aches and pains, and that night he dreams of dying.  It is not like his other nightmares composed mainly of images and dissociated feelings.  It's made of the gut wrenching, mind blowing pain of being torn limb from limb and slowly eaten, and the anguish of a beating heart split in two.

 

_Maria_ , he hears someone calling.   _Maria.  Wake up.  Wake up!_

 

"Erwin!" Levi is shaking him.  He offers a cup of water, coaxing Erwin to drink.

Levi is gentle and meticulous, holding the cup and tilting slowly so no water is wasted.  He helps Erwin sit up in bed and rubs circles into his back as Erwin comes back to himself.

His whole body aches.

One of the problems with soldiers in the Survey Corps, especially those who don't fear death, is they begin to hunt for it.

Erwin has not feared death for a long time.  But he cannot be allowed to hunt for it.

Levi strokes his face carefully.

"How did you know?" Erwin asks, voice pitched between a moan and whisper.  Levi's hand is cool on his brow.

"You had a look in your eye.  The expedition was going too well."

Erwin feels himself getting angry at the implied accusation.  "I wouldn't endanger--"

He taps his finger against Erwin's temple lightly.  "That's not what I said.  Listen to what I'm saying before you start shitting bricks."

Erwin closes his eyes, breathing through his nose.  Levi's voice is low and flat.

"There are some kids in the Underground who learn to kill really early on.  They start because they need to survive, and they keep doing it because it becomes part of what they know.  There was a story about one of these kids who got adopted by a really good family, stable and upstanding, didn't do any of that shit some people do to orphans.  And things were okay-- the kid would kill ducks, dogs, mice and the family didn't think much of it.  One day, the kid killed the entire family.  They held a trial, just to ask why he'd done it.  He didn't know he'd done anything wrong.  He'd just needed to kill, like people need to take a shit every day."

"Levi--"

"Shut up, Erwin, and listen to me.  I told you when we met that I would be the one to kill you.  You think I was joking about that?  Don't ever fucking go hunting for your death, because I'm the one who holds it."

All those lives and all those deaths, repeating again and again and again, dying over and over, soldiers, Titans, humans all.  Erwin leans in and kisses Levi deeply, fingers lacing together.

"All right," he exhales.  He kisses Levi's brow, his temple, the line of his jaw.  "All right."

 

The memories of the dreams recede.

 

Levi's right.

It doesn't change anything.

Only now, it's sunrise.

Erwin smiles, secure in the knowledge that death may find him anywhere-- in battle, in politics, among humanity's blank and jeering faces.

But he need not hunt for it.

 

Levi is always behind him, following.

 

 

 


End file.
